'Blue Books' are not necessarily a source that many people would think of when researching their ancestors. But if you had family in the Western Australia public service, they are a place you should be looking. Blue Books are summaries of governmental activities and contain many statistical records determined by the activities of the government and the economy and as such can prove useful references for determining an historical perspective at a given point in time. Given the lack of census records in Australia, these publications can often provide similar records for government employees.

You can expect to find people named within their categories or government departments including as follows:

Legislative Council

Government employees in alphabetical order

Governor’s staff

Colonial Secretary’s staff

Executive Council staff

Staff listed by government department

Return of officers giving security for due discharge of duties

Consuls

School head teachers, members of Boards of Education and attendance officers

Just some of the departments that people listed here come from are: postal, railways, hospital, education, works, mines, printing, fisheries, gaols, legislative assembly, harbour, agriculture, lands, and charities. There is a section on pension, this provides the name of the person, amount of their pension, date from which the pension has been paid, employment position and where, the amount they earnt while employed, and their cause for retirement.

If you had ancestors in the Public Service in Western Australia in 1894 (or earlier if the were receiving a pension by then), there is a good likelihood of them being listed in this volume.

This ebook is a the same as the CD version from Archive Digital Books Australasia which is available from Gould Genealogy & other retailers. This CD contains high quality scanned images of the whole original volume, and has been bookmarked for easy navigation. Pages can be searched, browsed, enlarged and printed out if required.